Monday 31st August

We’ve got a plague of small sandflies at work, since late last week. It must be the change of weather, or the painters have disturbed a breeding area. I thought it was bad last week, by Friday, but today it finally drove me out to the shops and a large can of flyspray. They don’t bite as such, but they do have a sting to them when they do decide to have a feed. And being as small as they are they get everywhere. Once I had them getting in my ears and stinging that was enough.

I sprayed the office, it was a bit like chemical warfare, a thick fog of spray. The floor was literally black with the bodies, but it only lasted an hour or so till more arrived. I spent most of the afternoon spraying the bloody things.

Tiffany and I are out to lunch on Thursday, a meeting with all the people who are meant to be keeping Honiara clean and looking good. It’s at Kwitano Mendana Hotel, with lunch provided. It’s good we’ve got the pricing for all the gardens done, we can argue for payment for them now that it’s going to become more official. Apparently it’s being driven by Solomon Tourism, who have been analysing all the tourist questionaires, and Honiara has been top of the list as the dirtiest and filthiest town in the Solomons. As the saying goes, “No shit Sherlock”

You don’t need a questionaire to tell you that surely, just a walk along the street does that. Hopefully Tiffany and I can get some better co-operation from everyone and mainly better funding for the work SEB does. Having Keithie out of town for the month is a mixed blessing, we can argue for proper costing, not just a figure pulled out of the air.

The big truck died over the weekend, nothing serious thankfully. David arrived with it this morning saying it had to be push started because the battery was flat. I went out to have a look, turned the key on and heard the starter motor clicking away from the solenoid. Ok the battery was low as well, he’s had his big radio and speakers in it over the weekend, and probably left the radio on without running the motor to keep the charge up. Anyway, we took the starter motor out, the thrust gear on the Bendix spring was almost dry sealed in place, it could hardly be pulled out let alone spin out, so it got a good dose of CRC656, and the solenoid got a few good taps with a hammer. I’m not sure which worked, but once it was back in place it worked. We’ll have to get another solenoid for it I think, or make sure the battery is always charged up.

I’m stuck on Tantrix 19, it’s taken me a couple of hours so far, and I’m still no further along. I have the loop made, it’s just trying to get all the other colours to match now.






I was discussing with Tiffany today about getting one of the local radio stations in to the Gardens on a Friday afternoon, as some sort of focus and entertainment for the teenagers. She isn’t wildly enthusiastic, but I’m allowed to contact XFM and SIBC about it. XFM would be the better I think, but either one that can do a mix of music and promotions, with local bands and musicians will work. There is the problem that we may get too big a crowd, and lose all control, but we can always close the gates and not have it if it gets too big a problem.

I don’t know how anyone can use the touch pad on a laptop and not go mad with frustration. My usb mouse finally gave up working entirely over the weekend, and I’ve had to get used to the touch pad again. The led light in the mouse broke off the contacts, which rendered it useless, obviously. Trying to scroll and navigate around with the touch pad is an exercise in futility for me, I had screens opening, closing, minimising, pages I didn’t want opening, stuff I was trying to save vanishing.

I lasted till 10 o’clock, and went into Point Cruz Centrepoint and coughed up $70 for another mouse. Which isn’t too bad, about NZ$12 which is what I paid for the mouse originally.

Why can’t they fit a scroll wheel into a laptop?

I’ll mention www.joepastry.com again. If you have any interest in bread making, baking in general, and just plain offbeat facts and trivia about bread, flour, baking, wood fired ovens, he has a really interesting blog. The exact opposite to this collection of disjointed ramblings. Tell him you found him here, and say Warren sent you.

Hi to Gytha, MaryAnne, Sandy and Sus, Sally, Rhonda.

Saturday 29th August

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Another month draws to a close. The potholes along Mendana Avenue are multiplying again. All the old favourite ones are back, and where they dug up the tar seal to make a patch all the edges are corroding away so as well as the original hole, the edges are creating new ones. We’re all back to the weaving and dodging driving style. The standard joke around town now is about how the police figure out the drunk drivers. They’re the only ones driving in a straight line down Mendana.

The man didn’t arrive at the Gardens with the crocodiles before I left yesterday, although I did leave early due to the power going off at 1pm. No warning in the paper, just there one minute, gone the next. I despair about getting any manufacturing business or any business which depends on electricity here.

Telekom is having its monopoly broken finally, but still going to get $68 million for loss of revenue. It was given a 15 year sole contract during the troubles, when no other company wanted to come here with the fighting, and it has hung on tooth and claw to it since. And being a monopoly it didn’t need to offer any service, as you may have read my comments on the service or lack thereof. Unfortunately, it is going to keep ownership of the communications portal, so I’m not expecting internet access to improve without a huge increase in bandwidth available.

Hopefully someone will pick it up, and stop the speed restriction so we can use skype voip, as well as be able to open youtube, and any web based applications. I can’t open most of the apps on facebook, it times out for anything in there, and loading pictures is turning into a farce. If I go into work early Sunday morning I can sometimes load a dozen pics into webshots, or my 419 album in photobucket, but even that can take a couple of hours, with frequent time outs. It works one pic at a time, which is really frustrating waiting 20 minutes for each picture, and if I try to open any other programme it freezes the picture loading.

Still, all things considered I’m lucky to have any internet access at all. It just shows how wide spread communications have got over the past 20 years. Even the VSA people in Temotu have access, and that is as far off the map as you could possibly get here. Finally found out how far it is to Temotu from here, 800 km, 500 miles, and all by ferry, there is a small airstrip on one of the islands, but its not always open. Bruce and Gwen on Makira have internet, but it is dependent on having petrol on the island to run their generator for a couple of hours in the evening, or daytime.

We’re going to try a different approach with the kids in the gardens on Fridays. I haven’t minded them coming in, it does get a bit noisy, but if that’s all it gets I’m reasonably happy about it. David would like to just shut the gates and keep them out.
I was in at work this morning sorting out the paperwork for the course and David called in, so we had a bit of a toktok about it. My view is that if we throw them out and lock the gates, they’ll end up in town, drunk, and in trouble, if we let them into the Gardens it keeps them off the streets, and all together. It took David a little while to see the advantages, if any, (I think there are advantages) as against locking the place up, but we’re going to try a few things with them this Friday. They all congregate in similar groups, so we’re going to be going to all of them with 3 rules that have to be followed. No fighting, no tagging, and pick up their rubbish afterwards. We’ll supply the garbage bags, any or all rules broken, the gates get locked. I might add excessive drunkedness to that list as well.

If there was any other place for them to go it might be different, but there are no teenage hangout centres in town, no skateboards or places for them anyway, and no fun type parlours or movie theatres.

I had to laugh at Misi when I went in today. He was sitting out in front of the office block with his mop handle, just watching the few kids around the place. I asked him if he had his bayonet as well, and he ducked into the lunchroom and came back out with an aluminium baseball bat, and said he didn’t need the bayonet, the bat was better. The amount of what can only be called casual violence here would have all the bleeding heart do good nanny knows best people in fits. Kids get whipped with a stick, or a good clout to the ear if they do anything wrong, in school they still use a cane on the back of the legs, boys and girls. I’m not going to get drawn into the rights and wrongs of it, but I will say that compared to New Zealand there is very little teenage trouble or insolence, all the teenagers I’ve dealt with in the last 6 months have been overwhelmingly polite, courteous, and helpful without any trace of antagonism. It may be the small scale of life here, where everyone knows everyone else, and their wantok are everywhere watching. A bit like Ireland in the areas outside the cities.

I’ve got up to 17 with Tantrix, 15, 16, and 17 took 15 minutes each, I know I can’t keep that speed up once it gets to 20 and up, if I remember correctly, 26 took me nearly an hour, or possibly more, I kept walking away from it for coffee breaks. It gets interesting at 15 with an extra colour added, although you don’t use it till 18 or 19, it cuts down on a lot of position choices.






I was looking in the Herald online at the photos of the lightning storm over Auckland last weekend, I’ll really have to get out and get some of the lightning here next time. Although that means getting out in the rain as well to get any good photos of it.

If anyone thinks the recession/depression is about to ease off, I have serious doubts. China is starting to off load its US $ holdings and investing all over the world using US $’s, the FED in the US is printing more money to cover shortfalls and debt, best estimates are for a 9 trillion deficit in 4 years time. That’s $9,000,000,000,000 in monopoly money, which is all the US $ will be if that happens.

Only way out of it all is to stop spending and start saving, throwing money at the problem and propping up defunct business and bad management isn’t going to work. That’s a bit of a simplistic view, but a close summation of how to fix it. Stop borrowing, stop spending, start manufacturing and get everyone employed again. Buying out GM isn’t going to make the cars any better, or affordable.

Thursday 27th August

Further to yesterdays bit about the Governor Generals Staff. I’ve said before in here about the way any form of certification is taken seriously here, I didn’t mention that both newspapers covered the awards, and it will be in tomorrows papers. I keep thinking about the TOPS courses I ran in New Zealand, and the attitudes of the people that were meant to be attending, but couldn’t be bothered. All most of them saw the courses as were something that stopped them from hanging out around Tokoroa, smoking dope, and just in general being useless members of society. There were a few in each course who did take the opportunity, and really used the courses to improve themselves, but they were really in a minority.

Here it’s the other way around, even the kids for whom school doesn’t really work well, still go to other courses to learn something. And everyone makes the most of any opportunity to learn. People actually make notes while you’re talking or demonstrating something, and come up afterwards to clarify things that they may have mis-heard or didn’t quite understand. It’s a brilliant place to teach, and knowing that everyone on a course intends to use any skills or knowledge to go further makes it worthwhile.
I thought I’d seen everything till this afternoon. I know that is a fairly wide ranging statement to make, but there’s nothing much really surprises me anymore. We had a truck pull into the parking area by the river bridge, I was in the office and heard a loud squealing. I knew it was a pigpig, but didn’t think much of it. I wandered out and over to the river and found a guy with a 2 month old bush pigpig taking it for a walk along the stream in the mud. On a lead as well. He’d caught it last month in the bush behind Honiara and kept it to fatten up. In the meantime, if he doesn’t take it for a swim every day it creates havoc at his place squealing and charging around.

He must have a bit of a zoo at home, he’s bringing a couple of salt water crocodiles down tomorrow for a swim, only small, about 4’ long. He says he has them trained to come when he calls. I’m a bit sceptic about that, I think they are just getting him trained so that when they are big enough they’ll have him for lunch. I’ve got a few pics of the pigpig, and hopefully I’ll have pics of the crocodiles as well tomorrow. It’s going to be an interesting Friday, with the usual Zoo Day for the teenagers, and a couple of crocodiles swimming in the swimming holes.

Other than that bit of excitement the day went as usual. The painters are still working on the building, we still don’t know what is happening with the Gardens, but we’re still in the office. All we’re doing now is just managing from one month to the next till we get some more contracts agreed. SolBrew have agreed to take the Town Ground Roundabout, so there is another $1,000 a month coming in from next month.. We just break even on that, but it’s better than before when we were maintaining it and getting nothing back. Central Police Station have decided to get their own gardener to maintain the outside gardens, Tiffany and I both feel it will only be a couple of months till they come back and ask us to take them over. We know the gardener there, I’d say he was a lazy useless git, but that would be insulting any other lazy gits. He’s lost all the tools they started with, well lost isn’t right, he knows where he’s sold them would be better. Plus he has a bad habit of breaking machinery so he doesn’t have to use it, lawn mowers, line trimmers etc. He worked for SEB for a few months last year until they got rid of him for damaging all the equipment.

NPF Plaza Gardens got a good work over this week. I’m hopeful that the tidy appearance will make the other shop block owners think, but I’m not holding my breath over it. Tiffany is doing a letter to take to the shops around the central garden by the chemists, but we both doubt that they will pay anything. It’s all new Chinese in the shops there, and they don’t get involved in anything outside their shop.

It’s past being a joke there now. I was past it today, and there are rats brazenly wandering through the rubbish bags and food scraps there now. In the daytime, with everyone walking past. Good fat rats too, plenty of meat on them, but I guess everyone is too well fed to be catching them. And the dogs wandering through town give them a miss as well, I think the rats would be an even match for the dogs here.

Wednesday 26th August

Wednesday 26th August

I just realised how fast time is going past. I know I write the date here, but it really doesn’t register till I look at a calendar and it’s nearly September, and I have another course starting the week after next. Or it may be the second week in September, I’ll have to check again at work.

Tuesday just drifted past, Tiffany and I spent a bit of time costing the next course to try and make some profit from it, but it’ll be a close run thing. I spent a bit of time going around tying tags on the Heliconia I had names for, and some of the ginger plants. I had Andrew looking at me in disbelief over the Zingerber zerumbet, it’s the shampoo ginger. There is a huge clump of it by the lily pond coming into flower, you use the sap from the flower heads as shampoo. I could see by the look on Andrews face he wasn’t sure if I was just winding him up as usual, or was being straight. I think he is convinced now as he heard me saying the same thing to Jennifer and Imelda in the Nursery later on.

I wandered over the tracks again yesterday, just checking the state of everything. There is a large Ficus down over the River Track, blown over during the storm on Saturday. It’ll take the crew about 2 days to cut and clear it all up. And left a big hole in the canopy above as well. It bought down most of another tree as well, and cleared a space down to the river.

Tiffany told me at 2pm today if I wasn’t too busy would I mind attending the Governor Generals Staff Certification Ceremony at Government House. She was meant to be with me as well, but with David down with pnuemonia, and Tessie still sick with malaria and pnuemonia, Tiffany isn’t having a good week.

It was a good gathering, a lot of food, all the staff got their passing grade certificates. The whole course was run by Tourism Solomon Islands, everyone had units from greeting guests, to food preparation and serving, and gardening. I was talking to the gardeners when I arrived early, as usual, I’m not up to speed with Solomon Island Time entirely yet, and they wanted me to go back for more teach and show. I had a word with the lady who runs the Tourism Courses, and I’ve got 2 more afternoons to go back and go over the practical stuff with the crew there.

Which is good, I rushed them a bit last week with stuff, so getting another couple of days to spend there will help them all. Plus it’s a gorgeous place to be working, full of frangipani, hibiscus, bouganvillea. And overlooking Iron Bottom Sound out to the Florida Group and Malaita. There’s a lot of pruning needing to be done, the Frangipani are hugely overgrown, with broken branches, dead heads, and just a tangle of stuff. I’ll be keeping most of the pruning for the nursery, there are some really good colours in there. Pinks with yellow centres, one is almost orange with a pink and white tinge, and a few with deep pink and yellow/orange centres.

Stage 2 of the Rove Prison job is as close to finished as I can wait for. I’ve got 10 hibiscus and 25 bouganvillea to go into the area, but I haven’t got the prisoners to work with for another week at least, and as they want to be the ones planting, I’ll just keep the plants at the Nursery till David lets me know when to go back. The 2 big Delonix regia trunks we planted last week are weeping at the top from the cuts, which is good, they should be sprouting by the end of next week. It’s amazing watching them come back from being transplanted here. Especially when you know all they are is just two long trunks without roots or buds showing.

Monday 24th August

Hi Jerome, I hope you’re having a better time fishing in Schull than I am here. All the fishing charter type people here, including the dive trips and general boat sight seeing tours charge the earth for trips. Ok, if you convert it to AUD. NZ, Euro, USD it isn’t that much, but when you’re like me on a volunteers income it is a months income for me to go out for a days fishing. It is SBD$2,500 a day with the dive trip people, SBD$10,000 on Lalae Charters. About AUD $400, NZ$500, €250 for the dive trip. Still expensive I feel, mainly because of the consultants and RAMSI people here on huge amounts.

Misi said it got worse at the Gardens on Friday after I left, if it was crowded with drunken teenagers by 4.30, it was totally out of control by 6pm. He caught 2 of his sons there drinking kwaso, and took to them with a mop handle. Then spent all weekend walking around town trying to find them after they ran off. Still hadn’t found them by today.

There was a bit of a traffic accident in town early Friday morning, 2 of our flower tubs were smashed, I don’t know what hit them yet. It must have been a good hit though, they are 100mm concrete sides, about ¾ tonne each. I went to Central Police about it, then sent a letter in today asking for compensation from the driver when it gets to Court, or else his insurance company so we can claim off them. Close to $2,600 to replace both tubs, the artwork alone is $800 to get done on each of them. David was quite impressed with me putting a claim in over it. All they have done previously is just replace any that get broken, and never thought of claiming from the drivers.

We have got orders for 100 bags of our potting mix now, still another week away from being ready so Andrew and a few others are going to be busy feeding the compost through the mulcher next week. At $20 a bag it is a good money earner from what is just waste material. I’m going to try and get the 20 kg rice bags to use, and offer a free bag of potting mix if all the bags are returned. 10 bags or more though. It should work out cheaper than continuosly buying plastic rubbish bags to be used once.

All the helliconia and ginger plants are starting to flower really thickly now. I’m finding all sorts of different varieties, Heliconia rostrata and auranticum, Zingerber zerumpet and amaricans both in flower. Zingerber amaricans is the Shampoo ginger, you can use the sap out of the flower heads for shampoo.

A lot more orchids flowering as well in the orchid house, Dendrobium spectabile, and macrophyllum, spectabile has twisted petals, the macrophyllum species, which I’m only guessing at because it looks similar to the pictures, has really hairy calyx and petals and leopard spotted flowers. Plus a lot of others that I can’t find any reference material on other than that they are Dendrobiums, just which species is all guess work.

PM Sikura is in todays Solomon Star saying that he had nothing to do with the Parliamentary Entitlements Committee result. As he was the person who appointed 2 sitting MPs, and one ex-MP to a 5 person group, one being the Finance Minister, and all supporters of his, I find it slightly hard to believe. But he has formed an Inquiry Board to look at the Parliamentary Spouse $50,000 grant section. The whole thing needs to be addressed, and soon. Doubling MPs wages, and giving them $500,000 termination grants if they get voted out isn’t going to fly here, well, not without another riot and trouble.

As was mentioned to me last week, when you come from a “hunter/gatherer” society, you grab everything you can before someone else does. Add in the “wantok” system and you have a recipe for graft and corruption that beggars belief. Plus the endless ego boosting to prove how big a man you are all adds up to a totally dysfunctional civil service.

It also explains why most of the fruit and vegetables in the markets are always under ripe. If the growers waited till it was ripe, someone else would be taking the produce for themselves, it is still a very communal society, with no private ownership, and all your wantok feel entitled to borrow, take, use anything you may have. It isn’t uncommon for the people at work to arrive home and find 10 – 30 of their wantok have arrived and moved in, and it is your responsibility to feed and house them till they move on. David and Tiffany had 15 of Tiffanys wantok arrive for a week a short while back, it was hell for both of them. Their house is still being built, no water, electricity, and to have 15 extra, including teenagers wasn’t good for both of them. But it is something that happens and all you can do is go with it, it all sorts itself out eventually.

Sunday 23rd August

Called into work this morning to post the previous one, and to see if the painter wanted to get into the office and paint, but he’s still waiting for more paint so won’t be doing it till tomorrow or later in the week. Bloody nuisance, we’ve got all the desks in a huddle in the middle of the room, filing cabinets, shelves all stacked around our desks.

Weather is crappy today, overcast with rain, still hot and sticky though. Shopped at Kukum Fish Market this morning, and spent the rest of the day baking and preparing meals for the week. I’ve got 3 loaves of herb and garlic bread done, and 20 spring rolls, 20 curry and rice rolls, and I’m making sushi for work tomorrow. Plus a container of fresh pawpaw/banana/pineapple chunks to have with yoghurt for breakfast.

Finally found Alan Carlins IPCC Report that was rejected by the IPCC. Well worth reading, it punches big holes in the Global Warming theory, its no wonder the IPCC didn’t publish it.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/released-the-censored-epa-document-final-report/ Scroll down the page a bit, read Alans comments first, he was given 5 days to prepare the report, which is why there are pieces missing or not fully explained.

It is a big file, in Adobe pdf, but worth reading. Someone has finally admitted it is probably a natural phenomenon, linked to sunspots, ENSO and ADO, La Nina, El Nino and several other cycles rather than CO2/greenhouse gas etc. The biggest worry in it is the failure of sun spot cycle 24 to start, if it doesn’t start soon we’re looking at 20 – 30 years of cold temperatures to equal the late 1800’s, but it’s part of the normal 30/60 year cycle.

A few parts of the report point out the increase in wheat/crop productivity since 1970, which as I’ve always argued, is due to the CO2 increase from 290ppm to 385ppm. If we could get up to 400 ppm or higher to 600ppm that is optimum CO2 levels for increased crop production, plus the plants have better drought resistance. Still, getting anyone to admit they’ve been wrong with so much money at stake isn’t easy. Plus the IPCC and all it’s followers will be out of a job. Not that that matters, they’ve been taking funds that could have been better spent on improving peoples lives instead of fear mongering and setting up a huge carbon trading ponzi scheme. As well as trying to condem every developing nation to 3rd world status forever.

Which is one of the reasons I walked away from the Green Party. Their basic manifesto accepts millions of deaths from starvation to get population figures down. No wonder they jumped headfirst into the AGW religion. Just another way to stop poor countries developing.
Welcome to my soapbox forum.

Finally bought some cassava today as well. You get it instead of potato chips with fish here, and it reminds me of sweet parsnip, with a bit of kumara (sweet potato) added. Stringy centre thread though, it can be like dental floss if you don’t know it’s there. It’s really nice steamed, or fried. In a curry with coconut milk, basically anywhere you want a sweetish starch vegetable.

I’ve got 4 rolls of sushi setting, one for me, one for Tiffany, and it depends on whoever else turns up at work tomorrow. We might get through all four rolls once it’s cut up. I bought a tin of Black and Gold Salmon, it’s the cheapest tinned salmon in Wings, $28, and it is definitely the salmon that John West reject. I was expecting pinkish fillet of salmon, it turned out to be a grey colour, more like mullet than salmon. If you close your eyes, and don’t smell it, it is almost not quite salmon, once you look at it it is definitely not salmon. I suppose it is, the label calls it tinned salmon chunks in brine, but it isn’t something I’d be putting out for a dinner party. I’ve had cats that would have refused to eat it. My dogs would have loved it though.


I may have put a bit too much wasabi in, I was munching the trimmings and it cleared my sinus out really quickly.

I’m working my way through my Tantrix Puzzle again, up to 13 tiles today, in an hour or so. Once I get them all done I’ll post pics of the solutions. Fitting the last piece is always a pain when it starts getting big, matching all the colours as well as the loop.

http://www.tantrix.co.nz/

Rose sent me another book, Breath, by Tim Winton. Australian writer, it’s a sort of boy learns how to surf from an older guru type book. That doesn’t do it justice, it is bloody good to read, it reminded me of growing up in Auckland and going out to the West Coast beaches like Piha and Karekare surfing and fishing. Or up to Te Ari Point. It was always dangerous, which I suppose made it all that more enticing. When I think about some of the places I used to go diving, waiting for the change of tide so you had ½ an hour or so of slack water before the rip started up, getting caught in the tidal surge and having to walk back a couple of miles along the sand at Whatipu after being carried way up the beach. Fishing off the rocks at Karekare and getting swamped by waves, losing rods and gear to the tide surge. It’s a bloody wonder I’m still alive.

I’d love another VW Camper, I know they are not the cheapest vehicle to maintain, but I’ve always had fun in them, plus getting cheap accommodation where ever I’ve gone. And a 9’8” surf board on top looks good as well. I’m too old to be working hard on a short board, a floating pavement is fine.

I cleaned out my little express maker today, finally. The seal was all clogged with coffee grounds and it was leaking everywhere instead of building up pressure. Its had a good workout since then today. It has lasted a while, I got it in Byron Bay at the Blues Fest a few years ago, and have been using it camping ever since. It was fun at the Gathering with it, 6am in the morning and the smell of expresso drifting across the tents. I always had a few comments from the neighbours.

This is turning into a proper Sunday night ramble, disjointed snippets of memory jotted down at random. That’s what you get when you spend time going through photo albums looking at all the old pics. I must have scanned over 1,000 photos onto disc before I left, with the intention of compiling them into some sort of sequence and writing about them all. 6 months here and I’ve finally got around to looking through some of the discs, so with luck I may get started soon. I did do a family history cd while I was in Ireland, and sent it to Damian and Hayden. And Stef. Pics of everyone growing up, and all the pics I have of me growing up, with even older family pics of Great-grandparents and the original house in Clare.

Saturday 22nd August

Had an interesting day Friday, well, the morning anyway. Tiffany and I had a 2 hour course for the gardeners at the Governor Generals house on Kola Ridge that Tiffany had organised. Beautiful grounds, a few acres of trees, buildings, gardens, tennis courts, swimming pool etc, all over looking the strait out to the Florida Islands and over to Malaitia. The gardeners appreciated us going, I took a lot of handouts from the Level 2 Course, and we spent 30 minutes roughly going through each one.

It was good going there, the gardeners have all done the level 1 course, but never attempted Level 2 so there are some big gaps in their knowledge at the moment. I found a large hibiscus next to the area we were using, with purple mottled leaves, so that gave me the intro to nutrients and fertilisers. After a couple of hours just straight talking and question and answer, we went on a tour of the gardens, and discussed tree pruning, fertilisers, sprays, insect and fungus infestations. There is a lot of both there, so I left a list of sprays, fertilisers and instructions for them to follow up with.

We had a meeting with Keithie in the afternoon, still nothing settled with the Gardens, but we are getting a container moved down there, and put next to the Nursery as a back up for when it all goes flop, if it does. We’re going to stay in the existing office until we are actually evicted, on the possession is 9/10 of the law argument. If we move out now, it just gives Forestry the win without actually putting anything in writing, which is what I want.

There are more and more letters into the Star this week about the politicians handout, the PM Sikura is denying any knowledge, despite him having picked the 2 MPs to be part of the Parliamentary Entitlements Committee. It doesn’t help that one is the Finance Minister, Rini, who was the cause of the riots in 2006 until he stood down, and as he was PM for 4 days, he would get a free new house, and car, plus full pension for life with the new changes.

Some of the letters are starting to mention the 2006 riots, and it is quite possible the same thing will happen again if the PEC recommendations aren’t cancelled and rethought. It is certainly getting interesting.

The little garden area on the main road shops I posted the pictures of a week or so ago, that no one wants to pay the maintenace bill for is now a complete rubbish dump. Even the local shops are dumping their rubbish in it now. Bags of waste, food scraps, litter it is all piling up. The local shops there are all owned by “new” Chinese owners, as opposed to the local Chinese in and around Chinatown, and the “new” ones won’t get involved in doing anything in and around town. As my sister noticed, they just sweep out their shops onto the footpath, and leave it, or set fires along the street burning any rubbish. Tiffany and I approached the shopkeepers there last week, but they all said it wasn’t their responsibility, and they weren’t going to help pay for cleaning it up. So we’ve just left it. I’ll go in tomorrow and get some more photos.

It’s been hot and muggy all day, till about 6pm, when the rain suddenly started with no warning. It just fell out of the sky like a bath tub being tipped over. We’ve had an hour of it so far, and it’s almost stopped now, but there are brief bursts of heavy stuff in between the rain.

Rose sent my welding helmet, just in case Don Bosco have a new course starting, so I’ll be ready if they do. I think my sister is clearing out Mothers place and sending all sorts of stuff to me instead of just junking it. I’ve now got a woven basket, as if that isn’t available here, and another bath mat. And a couple of packets of biscuits. Much appreciated.

I did end up with the yoghurt maker, I’m not sure how much use I’ll get out of it. Wings has the yoghurt mix, at $48.50 per 1 litre packet. I doubt I’ll be buying it. That is expensive yoghurt in any language. Or currency.

You can get yoghurt in the some of shops, imported, at $22 for 120ml Yoplait cartons, but it is dependent on when the containers come in, so it’s not always there. I don’t buy it anyway, too far out of my price range.

The Bulk Shop had potatoes and carrots today! $12 per kilo for potatoes, $14 per kilo for carrots, and $48 per kilo for brocolli. Onions at $14 per kilo and heads of cabbage at $54 each. I stuck with a few potatoes and a couple of carrots. I did notice a few of the ex-pat and RAMSI people stocking up on the veg though, they can afford it. It really makes the difference between the local people and the imported overseas people so noticeable. I doubt any of the work crew could afford to buy anything like that, I know how I feel when I see it, and know it is really out of my price range, same with the fruit in Wings, apples at $20 each, oranges $25 each.

Nevermind, I can get fresh pawpaw for $3 - $5 each, pineapples for $15, and bananas for $10 a bunch, so life isn’t all that hard. I’d kill for a good roast leg of lamb though, or even a decent meal of seafood. That is still way out of my price range.

Friday at the Gardens turned into a full on Zoo day. By the time we got back from Keithies there would have been 200 teenagers there, in varying stages of drunkedness, or stoned. Possibly more than 200, that was all we could see on the lawn area and down by the swimming hole. Judging by the noise from the tracks another 50 or more were up in the trees partying. Tiffany decided it was all just too much, so she rang Central Police Station, told them that there were crowds of drunken school kids in the Gardens, and we locked up and left them to it. I call it Zoo Day because the noise they make reminds of a zoo at feeding time, especially the primate enclosures when all the chimpanzees and others start hooting and calling.